“My Great Grandmother inspired me to lean in and make it happen— regardless of what others think.”
“I tend to hand make everything.” Deb considers recipes as guidelines and cooking as a creative outlet. She is running a cooking club as well as serving on the advisory panel for America’s Test Kitchen. She is the go-to person in her family and community for food-related questions.
Deb has many eclectic lifestyle habits, including baking and building elaborate gingerbread creations as well as everyday outdoor activities like walking and hiking with friends or listening to audiobooks. Indeed, she surrounds herself with books and plants and leads a busy life filled with work and play. Work as play? “Busy is better than bored” she said recently.
Currently wearing many hats, Deb runs a consulting firm and serves as President of the Portland Design Thinkers professional organization. Through the years, Deb has used her intellect and teaching skills to lead in curriculum – teaching design, engineering, and invention to children through Saturday Academy and creating scaffolding curriculum “Introduction to Design Thinking” to assist sixth graders into a project-based learning model.
Deb is resilient and pragmatic, with a side of nurturing. Her can-do approach to life has both gotten her into and out of some unusual situations. She’s not usually the life of the party, but often someone others look to as a thought partner and advisor.
Smart, open-minded, and a good collaborator, Deb is an expert at making sense of complex situations and finding ways to represent them in easy to understand ways. She finds the experience and perspective she’s gained the most rewarding part of getting older. She appreciates the simple things in life – fresh herbs, a good meal, and snuggling up to a good book at the end of the day. Deb’s most treasured aspect of her life is her friends and family.
Deb’s advice to her younger self: “This too, you will survive and learn from.”
